{"id":7393,"date":"2026-03-11T11:18:01","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T01:18:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?p=7393"},"modified":"2026-03-11T11:18:01","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T01:18:01","slug":"waisted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?p=7393","title":{"rendered":"WAISTED"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been doing some research into London in the mid-1950’s; this is where my stash of old books, maps, catalogues, guides and magazines comes in handy. The more down-market women’s mags – Woman’s Own, Woman’s Realm, Woman’s Mirror, Woman’s Day<\/em> and the rest – are probably the most useful in gauging the real lives of real people, but my favourite is English Vogue<\/em>. If I ever need a quick, emergency cheer-up, they are the very thing.<\/p>\n

My heroine, Helen Harris, is an Australian librarian working in London and though I dreamily turn the pages on her behalf, unfortunately she doesn’t have the money to buy anything, since she was probably earning between 8 and 10 pounds a week for full-time work. Take this suit, for instance. It was 11 guineas (the guinea was a unit worth 21 shillings, and used for ‘posh’ or luxury goods, like professional fees, high fashion, antiques and art) and it would be over AU $700 now.<\/p>\n

But, she would also have had to buy a corset or girdle and perhaps a long-line brassiere so that the skirt and jacket would fit. There are pages and pages of ads for corsetry in amongst the fashion, and I keep thinking how uncomfortable ordinary life must have been if you had to achieve a teeny-tiny waist on a daily basis. A few years ago, I bought a pair of Spanx – so-called ‘shapewear’ – to wear underneath a tight dress for a special occasion. It was hell, and not worth it.<\/p>\n

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Just look at the waist on this suit!<\/p>\n

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I’ve been doing some research into London in the mid-1950’s; this is where my stash of old books, maps, catalogues, guides and magazines comes in handy. The more down-market women’s mags – Woman’s Own, Woman’s Realm, Woman’s Mirror, Woman’s Day … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7393"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7401,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7393\/revisions\/7401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}